FACT SHEET: Biden-Harris Administration Commemorates the 30th Anniversary of the Violence Against Women Act and Strengthens Commitment to Ending Gender-Based Violence

"For too long, we have ignored the right of women to be free from the fear of attack based on their gender. For too long, we have kept silent about the obvious." – Joseph R. Biden, Jr. speaking at a Hearing of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, June 20, 1990

Today, President Biden will deliver remarks at the White House to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the signing of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), landmark bipartisan legislation that he wrote and championed as a U.S. Senator and has worked across the aisle to strengthen ever since. He will reflect on the significant progress we have made in reducing violence and supporting survivors as well as the work ahead to realize VAWA's promise of a nation where every woman and girl can live free from fear, free from violence, and free from abuse.

Working to end gender-based violence has been a cornerstone of President Biden's and Vice President Harris' careers. VAWA was the first comprehensive federal law to focus on preventing and addressing violence against women and to provide justice and support for survivors. The law transformed the nation's response to gender-based violence by recognizing that domestic violence and sexual assault are not a private matter but rather a violation of fundamental rights and dignity. Between 1993 and 2022, annual domestic violence rates dropped by 67% and the rate of rapes and sexual assaults declined by 56%.

In the three decades since the original VAWA was signed into law, President Biden has worked with survivors, advocates, experts, and Members of Congress of both parties to reauthorize and strengthen the law four times. As President, he signed into law the VAWA Reauthorization Act of 2022—critical legislation that expands access to safety and support for survivors, increases prevention efforts, and establishes new federal protections against online harassment and abuse. The President and Vice President also secured the highest-ever funding levels to implement VAWA, and the Biden-Harris Administration has acted quickly to implement the law's new programs and protections.

To mark the 30th anniversary of VAWA, the Biden-Harris Administration is announcing the following new actions:

• Providing new funds to address gender-based violence and support survivors. The Department of Justice—the lead agency in VAWA implementation—will announce more than $690 million in FY 2024 grant funding to support survivors of gender-based violence. This includes more than $40 million to implement new grant programs established by the VAWA Reauthorization Act of 2022, including trauma-informed training for law enforcement, pilot programs for serving protection orders electronically, strategies to address technology-facilitated gender-based violence, and victim-centered and trauma-informed restorative practices programs that address gender-based violence. By September 30, the Department of Justice will have announced funding awards for more than 40 grant programs and initiatives to help states, Tribes, territories, law enforcement, victim advocates, and community-based organizations address gender-based violence.

• Meeting the housing needs of survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence, and stalking. Gender-based violence is a leading cause of homelessness for families with children. Today, five federal agencies—the Departments of Agriculture, Housing and Urban Development, Justice, the Treasury, and Veterans Affairs—are issuing a new interagency statement to affirm VAWA's housing protections for survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence, and stalking as well as other individuals, such as those who assist survivors. The new statement underscores survivors' housing rights under VAWA, identifies potential housing scenarios that highlight the need for VAWA's housing protections, and reaffirms the agencies' commitment to enforcing VAWA's expanded housing protections in a manner consistent with each agencies' authorities. The Department of Housing and Urban Development is also announcing the establishment of the Office on Gender-Based Violence, as directed by the VAWA Reauthorization Act of 2022, which is located in the Office of the Secretary and coordinates and implements policies and programs to address the safe housing and economic stability needs of survivors.

• Addressing online harassment and abuse. The Department of Justice will announce a funding award for the new National Resource Center on Cybercrimes Against Individuals as authorized by the VAWA Reauthorization Act of 2022. This new Resource Center will help law enforcement, prosecutors, and victim services organizations prevent, enforce, and prosecute cybercrimes against individuals, including cyberstalking, the non-consensual distribution of intimate images, and other forms of technology-facilitated abuse. The Department of Justice will also announce approximately $5.5 million in new grant funds to support local law enforcement in prosecuting cybercrimes against individuals and a $250,000 award to provide training and technical assistance to schools and other youth-serving organizations to improve youth online safety and support young survivors of technology-facilitated abuse.

• Engaging the private sector to combat image-based sexual abuse. Image-based sexual abuse—including real images distributed without consent and synthetic content generated by artificial intelligence (AI)—has skyrocketed in recent years, disproportionately targeting women, children, and LGBTQI+ people and emerging as one of the fastest growing harmful uses of AI to date. Today, following the Vice President's leadership in underscoring the urgent need to address deepfake image-based sexual abuse and the White House Call to Action to Combat Image-Based Sexual Abuse, the Biden-Harris Administration is announcing a set of voluntary commitments from AI model developers and data providers to curb the creation of image-based sexual abuse and proactively reduce the risk of new images from being generated without someone's consent as well as ensure that known, verified instances of image-based sexual abuse are excluded from their products and systems. These actions complement new efforts from the private sector to support voluntary principles to combat image-based sexual abuse through a working group with advocates, survivors, and researchers.

• Supporting states in using federal funds to keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers. Guns and domestic violence are a lethal combination: access to a gun makes it five times more likely that a woman will die at the hands of her abuser. State laws that require people under domestic violence-related restraining orders to turn in their firearms are associated with a 14 to 16 percent lower intimate partner firearm homicide rate. To help keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers, the Department of Justice is expanding technical assistance and federal funding opportunities for state and local law enforcement programs that remove firearms from domestic abusers convicted of misdemeanor crimes of domestic violence or subject to a protective order. The Department's new resources—which will include training, toolkits, and best practices from the Domestic Violence Homicide Prevention Firearms Technical Assistance Project—follow a recent Resource Guide to Address the Intersection of Domestic Violence and Firearms that encourages states to use federal funds for law enforcement, prosecutors, and courts to address this critical intersection. North Carolina, for example, is pursuing opportunities to use federal funding to address firearms and domestic violence by creating training materials for judges, district attorneys and survivors.

• Strengthening enforcement of new provisions to narrow the "boyfriend loophole." President Biden signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which narrowed the "boyfriend loophole" by prohibiting persons convicted of misdemeanor crimes in dating relationships from purchasing or possessing firearms for at least five years. To further implement and enforce this protection, the Department of Justice will work with states to educate them about the scope of this provision and to help ensure that the records of prohibited abusers are available to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. These efforts will inform the work of both law enforcement as well as state records repositories and court systems.

• Disrupting the cycle of abuse by supporting youth exposed to domestic violence.The Office of Family Violence Prevention and Services within the Department of Health and Human Services will announce $19 million in new funds to support state and local coalitions, Tribal communities, and community-based programs in disrupting the cycle of domestic violence. These funds will be used to meet the needs of children exposed to family violence, domestic violence, or dating violence as well as to provide services to their non-abusing parents—with the goal of preventing future violence and supporting children and families.